Featured books:
Beti Kare Sawaal, written by Anu Gupta and illustrated by Karen Haydock, Published by Eklavya
Beta Kare Sawaal, written by Anu Gupta and Sanket Karkare, and illustrated by Karen Haydock and Parmita Mukherjee, Published by Eklavya

Welcome to Peek-a-Boo! A column about the discovery and delight of revealing what was always there. We’ll review picture books, and occasionally, art and pop culture featuring gentle stories that hold space for complex ideas. Peek-a-Boo opens up conversations about identity, belonging, and love, for readers of all ages.

Dearest Curious Reader,
There is something wonderfully stubborn about people who keep asking why. They are rarely satisfied with bite-sized repackaged information or explanations that begin and end with “because that’s just how it is.”

Their questions keep on buzzing. Why can’t I wear bangles? Why do girls have to sit separately? Why do boys have to be brave? Why does my body feel different? Why is this happening to me? Why won’t anyone tell me?

Growing up, I learnt that some questions were easier to ask than others. Asking why the sky is blue or why plants need water was encouraged, rewarded even. Asking about bodies, desire, menstruation, masturbation or even gender was another matter altogether. Those questions were often met with embarrassment, glaring eyes or perhaps the least satisfying answer of them all: You’ll understand when you’re older.

We have never had more information about our bodies and brains than we do today. A question about puberty, consent, periods, sexuality, or relationships can be answered in seconds by a search engine, a social media reel, or increasingly, an AI chatbot. Yet even as information has become readily available in our pockets, talking about taboo topics has become increasingly hard. Perhaps the harder task is learning whom to trust, where to look, and how to keep asking questions when the first answer doesn’t feel quite right.

Children’s books, of course, cannot compete with the internet in the quantity of information they provide, nor should they try. What they offer instead is something the internet struggles to cultivate: the possibility of a slower conversation. A book allows us to stay on a page rather than rush towards the ending, to read, pause, return and reflect. It reminds us that understanding is rarely instantaneous, and that some conversations and questions deserve nurturing our curiosity. Perhaps, that is why I found myself reading two books that begin, quite literally, with a question: Beti Kare Sawaal (Daughters/Girls Ask Questions) and Beta Kare Sawaal (Sons/Boys Ask Questions). Even before you turn the first page, the titles suggest that growing up might have less to do with being told things, and more to do with having the agency to ask your own questions.

Listening to the conversation between the authors and illustrator, it became clear that these books did not begin as planned publishing projects or comprehensive manuals. They emerged over decades of working with children and adolescents, the topics inspired from conversations, children’s reflections and drawings. In many ways, the books feel less like repositories of information and more like invitations into a conversation that the writers and facilitators were having for years. (If you’re curious about how they came to be, I recommend listening to the conversation between the authors and illustrator alongside reading the books.)

The first book in the series, Beti Kare Sawaal, expands what information about adolescence can look like, moving from menstruation and puberty to questions of beauty, care work, marriage and roles defined by one’s gender. The book goes on to ask and answer who does the housework, why sons and daughters are valued differently, what marriage means, and what happiness might look like for a girl growing up today. While the book answers questions about the body, it also asks questions about the world the body grows up in.

In a similar vein, rather than teaching boys how to become men, Beta Kare Sawaal spends far more time asking whether the version of manhood handed to them is worth inheriting in the first place. It talks about puberty and reproduction along with friendship, addiction, feelings, masculinity and even asks the simple question, “If I were a girl?” Instead of assuming boys already know what strength looks like, the book invites them to think about it, making space for vulnerability and self-reflection.

Read together, the books refuse the familiar trap of treating gender as two parallel but separate worlds. Instead, they quietly reveal how those worlds are constantly shaping one another. They acknowledge that girls and boys are socialised differently, and therefore carry different questions into adolescence. The conversations are different because the expectations placed upon them are different, but both books allow the reader to see that understanding gender requires us to listen to one another’s questions too.

What nobody talks about, children’s books often do. There is still a long way to go, many embarrassing silences to interrupt and many words yet to write, but Beti Kare Sawaal and Beta Kare Sawaal offer a generous place to begin, helping readers sift sense from nonsense, myths from evidence, and shame from understanding. They do not promise to answer every question a young person may have about growing up. Instead, they remind us that asking questions is good, that seeking honest answers is everyone’s right, and that sometimes the most important information we need isn’t the answer itself. It is knowing that you have the right to keep asking difficult questions, again and again.

So, dear Curious Reader, I hope you will continue asking questions and let books answer back.

Picture Credits: Riya Parikh